


Skeleton Key

by solfell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Not Happy, Post Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 09:28:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1813570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solfell/pseuds/solfell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A battle of attrition after the war is won</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skeleton Key

There’s a woman standing by his bedroom door. Her back faces him and she has her right hand on the doorknob. She’s wearing jean shorts and a yellow blouse, and even though the room is too dim to tell what color it is, he knows it’s yellow. It feels like light, even in the gloom. He sits up in bed, opens his mouth to speak.

She locks the door; metal tumblers catch and a deadbolt clicks. The sound enters in through his eyes and echoes out through the back of his head. The sound fills the room for a moment of cacophany before everything falls quiet. The woman turns around.

He feels his body go quiet, too. “Mom?” he whispers. She doesn’t look anything like she did when she died. This is how she was meant to look, how she looked before she got sick. There’s light in her eyes, a bright awareness of everything around her. Right now, she knows more than he does.

He blinks and then she’s standing by his bed. She lifts one of his limp hands from his lap and curls his fingers over a key. It’s heavy and iron, like an old skeleton key. It feels warm in his hands and doesn’t match any of the locks in his real house, doesn’t match any of the keys. He doesn’t even have a lock on his bedroom door, normally.

But this is far from normal. He opens his mouth again, but his mom shakes her head. Her expression—she’s smiling but it hurts her to do that. The reassurance sits heavy on her shoulders. He remembers that look, the one where she smiles through the pain.

He wakes up. The sun shines through his bedroom window, highlights the blank walls of his room, the clean floor, the organized desk. He counts his fingers and reads a passage from the book on his nightstand. It’s something about the Vietnam War; how race factored into which soldiers saw heavy combat. Stiles doesn’t know what he can do about injustices of the past when he can’t even see his own future.

He doesn’t know if his mother actually guards the door to his mind, or if it’s just a figment that wears her face. It doesn’t matter either way, as long as he holds the key and the door stays shut.

It’s been months and everything still hurts, still feels cold. He can sit in the sun for hours or wrap himself in quilts, but nothing can make him feel warm again. Despite efforts, he hasn’t been able to gain back the weight he lost in the fall. Ribs press outward against taut skin; hipbones cut sharp angles. Hands and feet are weak and skeletal. He’s a bruise beneath undamaged skin, feels like something’s siphoned all the marrow from his bones, left him hollow like a bird.

Right now, he’s not sure how much longer he can wait for things to get better.

**Author's Note:**

> I was struck with the mental image of Claudia safeguarding Stiles's mind after the nogitsune's gone, and then this happened.


End file.
